The Journal of a Disappointed Man

Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned the idea of writing on “How Cats Spend their Time.”

January 17

Went with L⁠⸺ out catapult shooting. While walking down the main road saw a Goldfinch, but very indistinctly⁠—it might not have been one. Had some wonderful shots at a tree creeper in the hedge about a foot away from me. While near a stream, L⁠⸺ spotted what he thought to be some Wild Duck and brought one down, hitting it right in the head. He is a splendid shot. We discovered on examining it that it was not Wild Duck at all but an ordinary tame Wild Duck⁠—a hen. We ran away, and tonight L⁠⸺ tells me he saw the Farmer enter the poulterer’s shop with the bird in his hand.

January 19

Went to A⁠⸺ Wood with S⁠⸺ and L⁠⸺. Saw a Barn Owl (Strix flammea) flying in broad daylight. At A⁠⸺ Woods, be it known, there is a steep cliff where we were all out climbing to inspect and find all the likely places for birds to build in, next spring. S⁠⸺ and I got along all right, but L⁠⸺, being a bit too careless, let go his hold on a tree and fell headlong down. He turned over and over and seemed to us to pitch on the back of his neck. However, he got up as cheerfully as ever, saying, “I don’t like that⁠—a bit of a nasty knock.”

February 8

June 1

A Small Red Viper

Went to L⁠⸺ Sessions. After the Court rose, I transcribed my notes quickly and walked out to the famous Valley of Rocks which Southey described as the ribs of the old Earth poking through. At the bottom of one of the hills saw a snake, a Red Viper. Put my boot on him quickly so that he couldn’t get away and then recognised him as a specimen of what I consider to be the fourth species of British Serpent⁠—Vipera rubra. The difficulty was to know how to secure him. This species is more ferocious than the ordinary V. bera, and I did not like the idea of putting my hand down to seize him by the neck. I stood for some time with my foot so firmly pressed down on its back that my leg ached and I began to wonder if I had been bitten. I held on and presently hailed a baker’s cart coming along the road. The man got out and ran across the grass to where I stood. I showed him what I had beneath my boot and he produced a piece of string which I fastened around the snake’s tail and so gently hauled the little brute up. It already appeared moribund, but I squashed its head on the grass with my heel to make certain. After parting with the baker, to whom all thanks be given, I remember that Adders are tenacious of life and so I continue to carry him at string’s length and occasionally wallop him against a stone.

June 20

Sat at Liverpool University for the practical exam. Zoology, Board of Education.

At the close the other students left but I went on working. Prof. Herdman asked me if I had finished. I said “No,” so he gave me a little more time. Later he came up again, and again I said “No,” but he replied that he was afraid I must stop. “What could you do further?” he asked, picking up a dish of plankton. I pointed out a Sagitta, an Oikopleura, and a Noctiluca, and he replied, “Of course I put in more than you were expected to identify in the time, so as to make a choice possible.” Then he complimented me on my written papers which were sent in some weeks ago, and looking at my practical work he added, “And this, too, seems to be quite excellent.”

I thanked him from the bottom of a greedy and grateful heart, and he went on, “I see you describe yourself in your papers as a journalist, but can you tell me exactly what has been your career in Zoology?” I answered of course rather proudly that I had had no career in Zoology.

“But what school or college have you worked at?” he persisted.

“None,” I said a little doggedly. “What I know I have taught myself.”

“So you’ve had no training in Zoology at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, if you’ve taught yourself all you know, you’ve done remarkably well.”

He still seemed a little incredulous, and when I explained how I got a great many of my marine animals for dissection and study at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, he immediately asked me suspiciously if I had ever worked there.

For anyone who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith’s, it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around like the hosts of Midian⁠—ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you, exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from the depths where they have lain hidden.⁠ ⁠… A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises. Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe⁠—for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite, Anabaptist, Rosicrucian⁠—I don’t know, and I don’t care, for I hate him. I should like to smash his face in. I don’t know why.⁠ ⁠… In the whole course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him tomorrow round a corner and land him one⁠—just to indicate my economic independence.

The Albert Hall Hag

While waiting outside the Albert Hall, an extraordinarily weird contrast thrust itself before me⁠—she was the most pathetic piece of human jetsam that ever I saw drifting about in this sea of London faces. Tall, gaunt, cadaverous, the skin of her face drawn tightly over her cheekbones and over a thin, pointed, hook-shaped nose, on her feet brown sandshoes, dressed in a long draggle-tailed skirt, a broken-brimmed straw hat, beneath which some scanty hair was scraped back and tied behind in a knot⁠—this wretched soul of some thirty summers (and what summers!) stood in the road beside the waiting queue and weakly passed the bow across her violin which emitted a slight scraping sound. She could not play a tune and the fingers of her left hand never touched the strings⁠—they merely held the handle.

A policeman passed and, with an eye on the queue, muttered audibly, “Not ’arf,” but no one laughed. Then she began to rummage in her skirt, holding the violin by the neck in her right hand just as she must hold her brat by the arm when at home. Simultaneously sounds issued from her mouth in a high falsetto key; they were unearthly sounds, the tiny voice of an articulating corpse underneath the coffin lid. For a moment no one realised that she was reciting. For she continued to rummage in her skirt as she squeaked, “Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, O sea,” etc. The words were scarcely audible though she stood but two yards off. But she repeated the verse and I then made out what it was.